Made by Craig Mileham with Scribe
Apple Silicon brings great performance and battery life to Apple's newest line of Macs but sometimes it takes time for Application developers to update their apps to take advantage of the new hardware. This guide will show you how to check whether an Application has been updated to use Apple Silicon using Zoom as an example.
1. Click on Finder to open a new Finder window.
2. Click Applications.
3. Find the Application that you want to inspect from the list.
4. Right-click on the Application.
5. Click Get Info. This will open a new window with additional information about the Application.
6. You'll see listed under the General section all of the information tied to the application. The piece we're looking for is under Kind
There are 3 possible options for native macOS Applications: Intel, Universal, Apple Silicon
Intel and Apple Silicon mean that they were built specifically for different hardware platforms and will only run (with exceptions!) on those platforms. Universal is the best of both worlds and will allow apps to run on either platform.
If the application is listed as Intel then you will want to look and see if the application vendor has a version made specifically for Apple Silicon.
7. We'll take a look at Zoom's Download Page for what is available. The blue Download button will download the Universal installer. Underneath that there is a subtle link to download an Apple Silicon specific version. Either one should work on Apple Silicon but if you are having issues with the Universal Application, please try installing the Apple Silicon version instead.
8. Once you've identified which version you need and have it downloaded, you may run the newly downloaded installer. After installing the Application, you can double check what Kind of application it is by following Steps 1 - 6 again.